Clean Up Earth scratches a similar itch to Powerwash Simulator, but doesn’t offer the same satisfying gameplay loop.
Towards the end of last year, I tried out the demo for Clean Up Earth. I found it to be a solid enough cosy game in which you hoover up rubbish from a variety of environments. Having now tried out the full version, it feels as though the demo showed everything the game had to offer and the full version doesn’t do much more with the concept.
On any given level, you’ll need to go around with the Terra Cleaner, which is essentially a magic vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the rubbish that’s lying around. You’ll need to use the right nozzle for the job, with there being a few to choose from. Your generic one will work on generic rubbish, whilst buried or radioactive deposits will need a specific nozzle. Large rubbish has a special one too, with really big pieces needing to be dismantled with either an upgraded nozzle or working together in multiplayer.
As you clean up, you’ll gain recyclable rubbish that you can take to a machine which will turn it into coins or usable resources. Coins can be used to upgrade your Terra Cleaner and its attachments, whilst resources are used in the environment to open up new areas with ladders and bridges. It’s a nice way of slowly opening up the map. Upgrades just make your vacuum more effective, with stronger suction or larger effective areas.
You can also find modules that you attach to add abilities. There’s a radio that plays music which I immediately switched off as it somewhat spoiled the ambience. More useful are the Blipman, which beeps when there’s rubbish nearby, and the Turboboost which powers up your suction for a short time to clear out really large rubbish. For some reason, they are on a battery that you have to recharge by spending coins. If you don’t have enough coins, bad luck! Others include Infomap that I couldn’t work out how to use, as well as a distance meter which tells you how far you’ve moved. You can upgrade these using coins as well, but really you’ll only be using a couple of them.
It’s enjoyable enough, but certainly doesn’t match the satisfaction from Powerwash Simulator, and I think that’s because of the nature of how you suck up the rubbish. It’s quite nebulous, just dragging in clumps of rubbish, whilst Powerwash Simulator simulator you can see exactly what you’ve cleaned to the point you can draw pictures in the dirt. Clean Up Earth isn’t bad, far from it, but it doesn’t feel quite as satisfying.
There’s also the incredibly annoying fact that if you miss a tiny bit of rubbish then the level won’t be fully complete. These can be hidden under a plant, or even near invisible if it’s a buried piece. You do have a drone that will float next to rubbish if you’re nearby, and the Blipman can help, but the levels are often so huge that you’ll be scouring them for ages. Give us a button that can light up where it is when there’s only a little left!
Surprisingly, there does seem to be a storyline here. I mostly ignored it as it popped up in little speech bubbles as you play, but it seems to involve travelling through time cleaning up rubbish that has been dumped in various time periods. There are a few characters with various motivations, but the reality is that this is a pro recycling game, which is a good thing in real terms.
Honestly, this could be an interesting framing to work with if it was just utilised in a smart way. The reality is that you wouldn’t know you were in different time periods if the start of the level didn’t tell you. You just go to a bunch of open outdoor locations filled with rubbish with no indication of when or where you are. If the devs had made greater use of this, having you visit historical cities or futuristic factories then this could have been really creative. I feel like the game’s environments lack any real personality and it’s a real detriment. I like that you could rebuild artefacts from the area by using recycled resources though.
There’s the multiplayer mode again, which I like the inclusion of. You get an enormous area in Nevada with literal tons of rubbish and a time limit before it all resets. You can join the players in the environment and try to clean everything in that time limit. Coins you earn carry over into the main game, which is nice. At the time of writing, I only found a few players to join, but it was nice to work together towards a common goal.
In terms of visuals, things look nice and bright and the environments look nice enough, even if they are a little empty. You can easily tell what type of rubbish you’re dealing with thanks to clear design, and collectible modules and nozzles are easy to spot at distance. I really did dislike that I had to recollect these in each level rather than being able to keep them. It seems like an odd design choice. The ambient sound is nice, and the noise the Terra Cleaner makes when it sucks up different types of rubbish is quite satisfying. The music exists but I really didn’t want it on so I switched off the radio very quickly. This feels more like a “podcast game” anyway.
Clean Up Earth is solid enough to be a fun, relaxing game whilst you unwind listening to an audiobook or similar. Whilst it’s not the strongest cosy game out there, and lacks any real personality, you’ll find it scratches that itch for your time with it. If you can find enough like minded people, you might even find that multiplayer cleaning mode fun for a while too.
Clean Up Earth is available now on PC, Xbox, and Playstation, and coming soon to Nintendo Switch 2.
